Staring into the Dark

When you stare into the abyss, it stares back too.

“Staring into the Dark”.

18” x 24”. Digital print. 2023.

ABSTRACT

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, is precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.”
-Carl Sagan, “Cosmos”

THE SHORT OF IT

“Overview

THE LONG OF IT

Theodora is at war with herself. Her story is one of forging identity and finding hope amid her struggles with existential despair.

Hundreds of years from now, a group of young veterans struggle with identity, worth, and where they belong in the world.

The story is set in America, one transformed by centuries of climate change and the aftermath of an apocalyptic war between humanity and aliens known as the Wolves.

Theo is the main heroine of this story as she travels across the country to reach her family in New York City. This is both an external journey where she journeys with other young people whom she fought with and learns to coexist with them, but also (and especially) is an internal journey deep inside herself to the depths of her own hurt, doubt, and shame.

The Wolves are psychological beings which fight deep within people’s minds and souls for their surrender. They are a metaphor for depression and despair, but they can also function as anything that seeks to destroy a person’s individuality and sense of purpose or value.

When one stares into the abyss, one must be strong enough to withstand the gaze it returns. And if anyone is strong enough, it’s Theo Sol.

Research

Theo is linked to motifs of fire and the sun because she is the Promethean figure of “giver of fire” to those around her. Specifically, she is an artist and a creator in a harsh and authoritarian time and culture where practicality and stoicism are prized and creativity and passion are deemed “useless”. However, light and fire are also linked to the narrative’s antagonists, the alien race known as the Wolves. It’s in rejecting her own gifts and her own nature that Theo comes to embody this internal battle between self-rejection and self-acceptance.

PREVIOUS ITERATIONS

1: Comp for Illustration 1

In the initial comp, I am trying to cement composition, color palette, and value hierarchy. All elements tell a story and evoke a very particular emotional territory: in this case, it is fear and danger of what lurks deep within the environment of one’s own mind. Theo is depicted running from a monstrous form lost in the woods. She is tiny in the image, dwarfed both by the monster and the scale of the burning forest around her.
2: Illustration 1

This is the finished initial painting, done with acrylic paint on illustration board at 12” x18”.
3: Riso Value Hierarchy

Next in the genealogy of portraits for Theo was a risograph print at letter size, 8.5” x 11”. In the first comp the value hierarchy is established. Deep blacks indicate where the most saturated risograph ink will be printed, while light areas and white are less saturated or devoid of printing.
4: Risograph Color Comp

Second for the risograph print is the color comp for how the final print should appear. Notice how different opacities of blue and pink ink create different tones of purple. Playing with opacities in risograph printing can result in a plethora of different tones while using limited colors of ink.

PROCESS

1: Rough Comp

After making an initial sketch in my sketchbook at a small size, I scanned it into my computer and resized it at poster size in Photoshop. At this stage I am trying to finalize the composition and placement, keeping in mind concepts like the rule of thirds for help with composing the image. The grid is in anticipation of transferring the Photoshop sketch to an illustration board at the size the final poster will be, 18” x 24”. The reason for this is I want the hand-drawn and hand-painted quality to the linework that I thought would be lost if the linework was created digitally.
2: Hair and Face Shadow Shapes

Once the sketch was transferred onto the illustration board at poster size, I used tracing paper to paint the shapes I would need to complete the portrait beyond mere linework. Thinking of each sheet of tracing paper as a ‘layer’ of its own was imperative. Although I am painting with black paint, that is only to capture the shape and texture that I want. Color will be added once each layer is scanned back into the computer and placed in Photoshop.
3: Hair Shape

Theo’s hair shape is a vital part of her character design. It speaks not just to the fundamentals of her racial identity but also to her complicated relationship with her mother, who also sports a big lion’s mane of hair. The two characters are in many ways opposites and argue nearly as much as they get along, so it was a marker of a complicated genealogy from mother to daughter.
4: Linework, Round 1

Now we are finalizing the lines of her body and face. All these separate layers are being painted on sheets of tracing paper (so I could trace the initial sketch on the illustration board) and would be scanned in to be colored in Photoshop.
5: Linework, Round 2

In this round, I adjusted what I felt was an unengaging and bland profile of her upper body in the first round. Instead of just holding her arms by her side, there is now tension and fear in his pose, complimenting the angst on her face. She also holds a tree branch, both as a staff of a sort and as an improvised weapon against the danger she faces in the environment she tries to find her way out of.
6: Shadow Doppelgänger

Finally, I decided I wanted to indicate what antagonistic force prowls the woods she is lost in. These are the psychological enemies of the narrative, aliens without form that dwell deep within each person’s psyche, a very un-subtle metaphor for anything like despair or self-doubt that inhibits a person from accepting themselves or finding lasting meaning or purpose in their lives.